It is known in the field to use internal combustion engines which operate by means of a fluid and drive a rotary shaft.
The aforesaid engine types can generally be distinguished as engines in which the force originates in cyclical form, as an action of pressure in a volume defined between a fixed part and a movable part, such as those with pistons with alternating motion or with rotary motion, and engines in which the force comes from the reaction of the fluid when it is moved on the rotating parts, arranged either along the motion axis of the fluid (the jets) or transverse thereto (the turbines), due to the speed variation of the fluid subjected to a pressure drop.
The present invention refers to engines of the second type, i.e. rotary type internal combustion engines. These engines have jets arranged inside the circular periphery of the movable part, called the rotor.
Among these engines, some solutions employed up to now consist of installing autonomous jet engines around a wheel and to make the normal thermodynamic cycle occur in each engine; typically such cycle consists of air suction, compression, combustion, expansion and discharge, with the start of tangential thrust applied on the rotor. In other cases, the thrust originates by directly ejecting, from suitable nozzles situated around the circumference of the rotor, compressed fluid sent by a motion-compressor, or generated by a pressure drop. In such applications, the thrusts of the various nozzles occur independent of the angular position thereof. Embodiment examples can be some helicopter rotors, in which the nozzles are placed at the ends of the blades such that the jets create the thrusts, which come to substitute the mechanical drive of the rotor shaft carried out by an internal combustion engine; another typical example is the rotating wheel that is thrust by compressed jets of water, air or vapor.
In other cases, it has been thought to insert the cylinders with the pistons in the rotor; they are arranged radially and connected to the single jet chambers, which are placed inside the rotor, in a manner so as to obtain thermal combustion cycles, with formation of the thrust on the rotor during the gas discharge step; in such case, the cyclical steps are dependent on the angular position of the single chamber.
Generally, the rotary part, or rotor, has complex zones where the compressions of the operating fluid occur, or ducts which bring compressed fluid generated outside the rotor, together with valve systems for regulating the sending of the fluid into the combustion or ejection chamber.
One example of a combustion engine of the type reported above is described in the document WO 2009/019718 A1, which is incorporated by reference. In the aforesaid document, an engine is described that is constituted by a rotor axially mounted on a main shaft; at the periphery of the rotor, there are combustion chambers which are capable of being sealingly closed and are equipped with a respective suction valve, a trigger device and an exhaust valve for a convergent-divergent nozzle. The combustion chambers are filled with pre-compressed air from an external source by means of a rotary joint fixed to the main shaft. The fuel is injected into the compressed air flow through a second channel in the rotary joint, and the fuel-air mixture travels in a sealed environment through passages obtained in the rotor and through the combustion chamber. Subsequently, the suction valve is closed and combustion is triggered in the air/fuel mixture, the exhaust valve is opened and the hot combustion gases are quickly discharged, obliging the rotor to be moved in the opposite direction with an equal and opposite reaction. The process is repeated with the consequent output of continuous power.